


Role Play

by ButterflyGhost



Category: Slings & Arrows
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-01
Updated: 2012-07-01
Packaged: 2017-11-08 23:21:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/448680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ButterflyGhost/pseuds/ButterflyGhost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Part way through this fic I wrote a line that sounded vaguely familiar, then Three Days Grace popped into my head, with this song. </p><p>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPlu227Ib8I&feature=related</p>
    </blockquote>





	Role Play

**Author's Note:**

  * For [look_turtles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/look_turtles/gifts).



> Part way through this fic I wrote a line that sounded vaguely familiar, then Three Days Grace popped into my head, with this song. 
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPlu227Ib8I&feature=related

At first he thought he was never going to get used to the place. Then, he was terrified that he would. Terrified that he might become a shadow man, one of those patients who drifted through the corridors like ghosts, forever exiting stage left, eternal extras who never got better, didn't even want to any more. Self-confined to a lifetime of solitude, and flatness. Not even fear, not even despair.

 

He couldn't allow that to happen. Not when he had lived such passions. Better to feel pain, than nothing at all. He couldn't allow himself to be edited out of the stream of life. So he kept fighting them, fighting himself. Climbing the walls. There must be some way out of here, he thought, and laughed. He didn't know if he was the joker, or the thief.

 

And yet, inevitably, he did get used to it. That was the worst thing... the getting used to it. Used to his horizons shrinking, the sunlight reducing incrementally, day by bitter day; to pale patches stretched across the worn carpets. Used to the dust dancing in the faded beams that filtered through the window. Used to the air smelling of boiled cabbage, to mashed potatoes that were always runny yet still managed to be lumpy, used to stringy grey meat that tasted, always, of leather. Every ounce of drama and beauty draining out of the world, and words, the beautiful imminence of them, the power of them, sucked out of language, sucked out of life. Nobody to talk to any more. Nobody to hurt or be hurt by. Nobody to perform for, nobody to watch perform. He lost weight, and the doctors decided he was anorexic, added yet another damned drug to his regimen, and he bloated up instead.

 

In the end, he started palming his pills. He rode the withdrawal, grimly, refusing to give into the desire to take the damned meds and sleep. He could sleep his whole life away, if he wasn't careful. Too sleep, perchance to dream... Better not. He thought for a while of swapping the pills for favours with other prisoners, but he couldn't think of anything he really wanted, that anyone could give him... except, perhaps, her. To be able to return to how it was between them, before. To... forget. The chance to forget about it. That was what he needed, after that... after that horrible image she had put in his head. He had always been her audience. She had always been his. They played for each other, performed for each other. That had been their dance. Did she not know that he had no choice but watch that act, her and Oliver together, over and over again?

 

What the hell had she been thinking, either time? Either when she succumbed to Oliver's advances, or when she told him about it? What role had she been playing? Perhaps she had been mad too. Perhaps she should be in there with him. He seemed to remember her being here, briefly, at the very start, when he couldn't speak, or move, or think.

 

Ellen and Oliver... it still made his flesh crawl. He loved them both, he had done, he knew he had. What was this now, that he felt, if not love? What? Ellen and Oliver. Had he even been with a woman before? It hit his memory again, what she had said, and he pictured them, again, again, again. Oliver creeping over his own dear Ellen, a white and clammy body as he saw it in his head, corpse pale, like a crippled starfish moving at the bottom of the ocean. And Ellen lying there beneath him, naked, legs open, letting him squirm in.

 

There came the day, looking out through the window, when he realised that if he stayed in this place, it would haunt him forever. He had to get out, and the only way to get out would be to pretend to be sane. He would have to stop arguing with the nurses, trying to escape, bad mouthing the doctors, getting into fights with the patients. He would have to stop arguing with his thoughts out loud, and slamming, kicking and thumping against the walls.

 

Well, he was an actor, wasn't he? He might be mad as a hare, but he could act sane, if that was what it took to escape. 

 

In the end it took far less time than he'd expected to persuade his captors. Perhaps they were just happy to see the back of him. One winter morning he stepped out, and smiled. The smile was for the audience that wasn't there. He couldn't feel it in him, any joy, but still, he could smile, and smile, and smile, and be a villain. It should have been a sunny day, of course, but it was drizzling. If this had been a play, there would have been sunshine, and a repentant Ellen to meet him at the gate. Not that it mattered. Just a dream. Reality might be duller than fiction, but it was brighter than what he had left inside. He was... not free. He'd never be free. But at least he was out. Standing there, waiting for the cab, he felt like the scarecrow in Wizard of Oz. He had his little piece of paper to prove that he wasn't a mad man any more. 

 

Maybe one day it would stop haunting him. Maybe one day he could forgive Oliver and Ellen. Maybe they could forgive him too, for what they had done to him. People can forgive wrongs done to them, but it's a terrible thing to forgive one's victims. Until that day, he'd play a part. After all, each man in his time plays many parts. This was his part for now. And it was part of his story that he not let anyone know how much he still hurt. So he couldn't talk to them, couldn't see them. Couldn't see her. She would see straight through him. He was a sheet of glass... he simply was not that good an actor. If he saw her, he'd shatter, and the whole damned mess would start up again. It might take him years, the rest of his life even, but if he acted the part long enough, perhaps it would become real. Perhaps the pain would die. He laughed. He knew better than that. Pain didn't die. It merely changed it's shape, and sank into your bones. His father had taught him that much. What, he wondered, would his father think if he saw him now? He'd always told him to avoid the theatre. Right up to the very end. It was as though the man had prophesied. John of Gaunt on his deathbed. Methinks I am a prophet new inspired, and thus expiring do foretell of him... What else had his father foretold? He should have listened.

Too late. Time rolled on, swept all its sons away. The cab came, and he stepped into it, paid the driver, and was driven home.


End file.
